Bodies, Visions, and Spatial Politics: A Review Essay on Henri Lefebvre's <i>The Production of Space</i>

Stewart, Lynn A.

doi:10.1068/d130609

Cited by 83 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Resistance, as Lefebvre stated, has to start with the human body, with its corporeal ability to produce space (Stewart ). The lived playful spatial experiences outlined in this paper encourage a revisiting of the hegemonic economic and political forces that underlie urban planning and policy, and urban form.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nightscapes of Play: Enjoyment of Architecture and Urban Space through Bicycling

Morhayim

2018

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Anti‐automobile, anti‐capitalist, and pro‐environmental worldviews are known to shape bicyclists’ right to the city demands. This research uncovers another layer of their radical engagement with the city: playful enjoyment of architectural structures and urban space, using the case study of Midnight Mystery Ride, a community bicycle ride taking place in the middle of the night once a month in several cities around the world. Through theoretical lenses of play and rhythmanalysis, I argue that bicyclists at night take over spaces built with exchange vale in mind and introduce use value in the same spaces. Interviews with bicyclists demonstrate how their unconventional use of space questions separation from natural rhythms and nature. I demonstrate that their nighttime use of the city is also a critique of how urban space is organised largely for profit and discipline and of how the human and playful potential of urban space are not fully realised.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nightscapes of Play: Enjoyment of Architecture and Urban Space through Bicycling

Morhayim

2018

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“…But if this is so it is incumbent upon him to explain why concepts of xed and circulating capital, developed to explain a dialectical relation speci c to capitalism, might have this wider relevance. The fact that Lefebvre also explicitly indicates the presence in the past (and the possibility in the future) of a non-contradictory 'absolute space' where the concept of space has not yet been 'assigned a new role' (Lefebvre, 1994, p. 234) as a transcendent realm over and above a set of named places also suggests dif culties in simply positing 'space' and 'place' as dialectical categories (Stewart, 1995).…”

Section: Lefebvre Space Place and Differencementioning

confidence: 97%

Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity's (Im)moral Landscape

Smith¹

2001

Ethics, Place & Environment

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“…He argues that in the modern epoch there has been a shift in the 'conceived' and 'lived' moments in space's production (Stewert 1995). Traditionally, space is lived before it is conceived, but in the modern era the reverse has occurred.…”

Section: Intertextuality and The Referential Illusion 63mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Space in this mode is not lived through the experience of the body, but experienced through representations and a 'logic of visualization' which can be consumed, commodified and made more efficient (Stewert 1995). All this is summed up in the term abstract space: 'this space relies on the repetitive-on exchange and interchangibility, on reproducibility, on homogeneity' (Lefebvre 1991a: 396).…”

Section: Intertextuality and The Referential Illusion 63mentioning

confidence: 98%

Intertextuality, the referential illusion and the production of a gay ghetto

Miller¹

2005

Social & Cultural Geography

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This paper challenges Lefebvre's distinction between Representations of Space and Spaces of Representation. Most current work in this area has assumed modernist conceptions of power, thereby interpreting representations of space (conceived space) as the property of the powerful who alone possess the ability to abstract space for their particular ends. Contrary to Lefebvre, I suggest that representation and abstraction are not the agents of state capitalism alone but are also manifested in 'counter' discourses. As an example of a 'counter discourse' I draw upon a series of editorial articles written in a local gay-oriented newspaper about a gay enclave in Vancouver, Canada. I argue that these depictions cloud the distinctions as practised between conception, abstraction and the imaginary in urban space. They also serve to promote one interpretation of space above others, and in that sense they colonize the experience of everyday life in their own way. The act of 'speaking for' presupposes a certain power, and in these cases, highlights the fact that the power of representation and abstraction does not only occur at the state or 'system' level. I suggest that by overcoming the assumption of a zero-sum ontology of power, one can see how a variety of agents in the urban context engage in the attempt to carve out their 'own' spaces of stability in the urban social imaginary.

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Bodies, Visions, and Spatial Politics: A Review Essay on Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space

Cited by 83 publications

References 7 publications

Nightscapes of Play: Enjoyment of Architecture and Urban Space through Bicycling

Nightscapes of Play: Enjoyment of Architecture and Urban Space through Bicycling

Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity's (Im)moral Landscape

Intertextuality, the referential illusion and the production of a gay ghetto

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